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Silent Laughter

This post is going to be very long, but my old account got deleted so I'm reuploading my first and only fully completed chapter fic on here, but I don't have them seperated as chapters anymore, just the whole story in one go, and I'm too lazy to break it down into chapters so I'm just gonna post the whole thing right here under the cut.

It is a horror story involving monsters, sleep paralsysis, a kid name Jimothy, and I don't know what else. Sorry this description is really shit, I wrote it a while ago, it might be bad. It's a few years old by now I think.

Warnings: Hanging, horror content obviously, a bit of gore, very slight emetophobia warning, in general if you don't like horror stuff just don't read I guess.

To give you an idea of how long it is: 12'329 words :)

I looked at my calendar. Twenty X’s for twenty days. I had no idea when, or if, my old life - the life where I was happy - was ever coming back. My guess was that it wasn't. People don’t just rise from the dead. But to be fair, after everything that had happened, I wouldn’t be that surprised.

I normally don’t mark my calendar as the days go by. I found it just made it messy. But I wanted to keep track of how long it had been since it had happened. And how long it would take until it found me hiding in my shed. How long could I survive? My family didn’t even make it for twenty days. How could I last one more?

Twenty-two days earlier:

‘I don’t know what we’re going to do Jimmy,’ my mother told me, as we sat on the couch together. ‘We could make an appointment with the doctor’s if you think that would help.’

‘Probably wouldn’t,’ I lied. In truth, I just didn’t want to go to the doctor’s place. There were too many sick people there. ‘I read a book once, where the main character would have nightmares, and the doctor’s told him to be very active throughout the day, so that by the time he went to bed, he would be too exhausted to dream anything.’

‘Did it work?’ My mum asked.

‘Yup.’

‘Fine. You can try it. But if it doesn’t work, we’re taking you to the doctor’s whether you like it or not,’ mum told me sternly. I nodded in reply. Anything to get me away from the doctor’s, I thought.

I must not have been tired enough that night, because the sleep paralysis still happened. But this time it was different. Normally, a figure would be standing in the corner of my room, eventually to reveal itself as my mum, but with a distorted looking face. The creature would then laugh, without any noise, throwing its head back, a wide open smile forming, splitting open the face all the way to the ears, then ripping back, so the head from the mouth up would drop to the ground. The body would then turn into ribbons made of flesh, which would slither over to my bed and tie me to it. That’s when I would wake up in a cold sweat.

But this dream was different. I saw a figure, not in the corner of my room, but at the front of my bed. It was hanging, by what seemed to be a silhouette of a noose. The figure’s back was facing me, but it was spinning around slowly to face me. When it did, I saw my mum’s face. Her regular face, not distorted in any way. She looked normal, the only thing different being her blue face. But as I looked closer I saw that that was not the only thing wrong.

She had no eyes.

Where they were supposed to be were just black holes. Even then she still seemed to be staring at me.

I woke up. I wasn’t sweating, but I felt really sick, like I was going to throw up. I looked at the clock across my room and saw that it was 3:11am. I threw my blankets off of me and walked out into the hallway, heading to my parents room. What I saw did make me throw up at my feet. When I looked up again I saw that I wasn’t crazy.

Hanging from the foot of the bed was my mother, her eyes missing,her face blue. Just like my nightmare.

I walked up to her body, hoping that it wasn’t real, that it wasn’t her, that I was just imagining things, that I was crazy or that I was still asleep. But it was real. It was her, and she was dead.

I don’t know why I did what I did next. Whatever compelled me into doing it, I hoped it would never come again. Without thinking much about what was happening, I brought my hand forward, extended my index finger, and stuck it inside of her empty eye socket. I felt tears falling down my face as my finger wiggled around the empty space, seeming to have a mind of its own. I didn’t want to do this. I never would have even thought of it. But it was happening and I couldn’t stop it.

Until eventually it did stop, and I had control over my hand again. I quickly pulled it back and took a look at the substance that was left on my finger. Blood with a mixture of black goopy stuff. I didn’t think that black goopy stuff was normal, but then again nothing about this was normal.

I wiped my finger on my pyjama shirt and that’s when I saw it. It was just staring at me through my parent’s window. The curtains that were supposed to be covering them had been somehow ripped to pieces. Not by what seemed to be long sharp fingers that tore it to shreds, but by something that seemed to be cut with a knife. The thing that was staring at me, I realised with horror, was the thing from my nightmares. But it had what I assumed to be its normal face, not a distorted version of my mum’s. Its normal face was pale, no hair, no eyes, no ears, no nothing. Nothing but a tiny slit where its mouth should have been. As I stared at it and it stared back at me, stared with no eyes, the slit started to get bigger. It widened up to where its ears should have been, opening into the wide smile I would see in the nightmare.

Its head tilted back all of a sudden in a silent laugh, its face ripping open from the smile. Then half the head dropped to the ground and the rest of the body fell into fleshy ribbons that disappeared, like they always did.

It was only then that I remembered my father, who was supposedly asleep in the bed. I honestly wasn’t all that surprised to see that he wasn’t there. In fact, there was no trace that he was even there in the first place. No wrinkles in the bed sheets, no fresh dent in the pillow from his head, nothing.

Not knowing what to do with my hanging mother, I left the room, leaving her corpse to swing back and forth.

I walked back into my room, thinking that maybe if I went back to sleep, in the morning I would wake up and realise that this wasn’t real, because how could it? My door was closed, which was weird since I hadn’t closed it when I left. What was even weirder was the note that was taped to it.

She’s the first one.

It’s just a dream, I kept on telling myself as I opened my door and stumbled back into bed, ignoring the note. I curled up into a ball and brought my blankets up over my head and repeated the phrase “it’s just a dream” over and over again. I hoped eventually the tapping on my window would stop.

The next morning and the dream was still fresh in my memory. I tried to forget about it but to no avail. I hoped it would just forget itself. The first thing I saw made my heart skip a beat and my body freeze in terror. My curtains were ripped to pieces, like a knife had sliced through them, just like what had happened in my nightmare. I didn’t think it was a dream anymore.

I peered closer at the window and noticed a small crack in it, in a way that looked like something had been drilling into it lightly. Or something sharp had been tapping on it repeatedly. The sounds of taps on the window from the night before filled my mind and I once again felt sick to my stomach.

I left my room and saw the note from the door was gone now. Making my way up to my parents room, I saw that my mother was no longer hanging there. But there was plenty of evidence to suggest that she had been. The rope was still hanging there, looking like it had been ripped apart, but my mum’s body was gone. I looked down and saw my vomit from before was still there, and had stained into the floor. That was something to deal with later. My parents' bed was neatly made, not just my dad’s side, but my mum’s side too.

Then it hit me like a truck that I still didn't know where my dad actually was. He seemed to have just disappeared. I sunk down onto my parents bed, thinking about what I could and should do about everything that was happening. Thoughts were whirling through my head. What was happening? How was this possible? Where did Dad go? Have I gone crazy? Am I actually dead and gone to Hell, and now this is my punishment?

Eventually I came to a decision to investigate the windows. I saw the creature from the night before through my parents window, and the tapping on mine, so maybe they had something to do with what was happening. It didn’t make much sense, but it was the best lead that I had.

I looked at my window first, feeling the crack, thinking about how whatever had been tapping must have been pretty strong or sharp, or both, to get through the double paned glass. I looked at the grass beneath me to see if there were any signs of footsteps. Looking extremely closely, I noticed there were very slight dents in the grass, looking like a stub. It reminded me of how I always thought a pirate with a peg leg footprint would look. It didn’t tell me much though, so I moved onto my parents window.

Nothing could be found there, except for the same footprints, which were useless. I turned around and for the second time that day, froze in terror. My house's fence had always been one made of iron, spoked like a type of fence you would find around a graveyard. I had once seen a movie, where at the end of it a person got stabbed up through the chin by a tiny church spire that was in a miniature version of a village. The scene before me reminded me of that.

My dad was on top of the fence, skewered to it by the spokes protruding through his body. One through his chest, the other right through his skull, coming out through his eye. His blood splattered on the fence gave it a sort of rusty looking colour.

Hesitantly, I walked closer to the body, and saw, sure enough, his other eye was missing, blood and the same black goopy stuff weeping from the socket.

I noticed that there were people walking past, seeming to be coming one at a time down the street, but they didn’t do anything. For some reason, that scared me more than anything. I ran inside, terrified, confused and panicked, making it the second time that I abandoned a corpse.

At the time it escaped my mind that the people walking one at a time down the street were all the same person.

I ran into my room, faster than I had ever run before, and slammed the door behind me. I looked panicked around my room, trying to find something to help. My eye caught contact with my calendar. I picked up a pen and put an X through the dates for that day and the one before. I wanted to keep track of how long this stuff would be happening. I wanted to keep track of how long it had been since the tragedy of my parents death.

I got no sleep that night. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to risk the thing coming back. To keep me awake I kept my light on and paced around my room. Eventually I walked over to my speaker and connected my music to it, turning the volume all the way up. It seemed almost impossible to fall asleep with bright lights, movement and Metallica’s Whiplash playing at max volume.

I was spinning around my room when a knock on the door startled me and made me fall to the floor. Slowly I stood up. I knew getting out of my room would be a terrible idea to check the door, for all I knew the creature could be on the other side of it. But even with those thoughts in my head, I still left my room and headed towards the knocking. I took a quick detour into the kitchen first and grabbed one of the knives, the sharpest looking one there was.

I crouched down low on the floor so the thing didn’t have much of a chance of seeing me through the windows and started crawling towards the door. When I got to it I slowly stood up, placed my left hand on the door knob, and got the knife ready in my right hand. I positioned myself at the door so when I swung it open, I could move out of the way and out of view of the frame and whoever or whatever was standing there. I started mentally counting down from three, preparing myself to open the door.

Three, two, one…

I twisted the door handle, and swung the door open, quickly moving out of the view of what was standing there. After a tense minute of waiting, I realised that nothing had happened. I slowly moved my hand holding the knife into view of the doorway, a small threat to what was standing there. I moved my hand away and lowered down into a crouch, then slowly and cautiously poked my head behind the frame to see. No one was there. I stood up, knife still in hand, and looked out the door without leaving the house, just like they did in the movies.

I closed the door and went back into the lounge. I sat down on the couch and ran my hands through my hair, exhausted and confused. I didn’t know if I should find help or not. What would anybody be able to do anyway? They most likely wouldn’t believe me.

I held my head in my hands, thinking for solutions but not being able to come up with anything. I leaned back on the couch and focused my eyes on the TV, which was black and turned off. And thank God it was like that otherwise I may not have been able to see it. In the reflection of the TV, I could see something standing behind the couch, and behind me. I couldn’t see it properly but it was tall and pale, not wearing any clothes, but not needing to anyway. I couldn’t see its face because the reflection in the TV was blurry. I didn’t want to turn around, but I felt like l needed to. So I did.

The creature was indeed tall, and very pale. It had long arms, so long that they dragged across the floor. The hands weren’t really hands, but more pointed sharp spade things. Sharp spade things, that when the tip was banging against the window, could probably make a crack. It had no hair, no ears, no eyes, no nose, and for once no mouth. Yet I could tell it was grinning at me, like it had won. I had no idea how it had gotten inside. But then I remembered, this thing could turn into ribbons, just by ripping its head back and laughing silently. It must have done that, and slithered past me, unnoticed, when I was looking at the door.

The creature’s arm started to come up, and its pointy spade arm seemed to point behind me. I was tired of having things suddenly appear behind me. It wasn’t fun, it was terrifying. But the creature must have found it fun because a small smile did start forming on its face, except it was more like a small cut getting ripped wider and wider.

I turned around, preparing myself for what horror would be there, and saw a noose, just hanging from the ceiling. The creature clumsily walked around the couch towards it, arms dragging on the ground. It went behind it and mockingly put its head through its, smile getting bigger, as it tugged its neck down on the rope pretending to choke itself. It was obvious that the thing was taunting me, that it wanted me to do the same thing.

I started to back away from it, and the smile instantly dropped into a long droopy frown, which was somehow more terrifying than the smile. Maybe because I knew I had displeased it, by not going along with its plans and games. It didn’t want me to walk away, so I realised I couldn’t walk away. But I had to try anyway. I turned around suddenly and ran, opening the door and slamming it shut again, running down the street. I had to get away from it, from the house, and that stupid rope hanging from the ceiling. I didn’t want to turn out like my mother. If I was going to die, I wanted it to be on my own terms.

I turned down a street that I had never seen before and quickly realised that I had just made a huge mistake. It was a dead end. I heard the sound of something dragging across the ground and turned around. At first there was nothing, but then the creature slowly and casually appeared from around the corner, and started walking towards me. It was teasing me, I realised. It could have easily turned itself into skin ribbons again and just slid towards me really fast but it didn’t. It was going slowly, taking its time. It knew I couldn’t get away or go anywhere so it didn’t bother to chase. It was savouring this moment.

The smile started appearing on its face again, realising that it had caught me. It’s mouth opened up wide, head splitting backwards, still walking closer and closer. When it got to me, it put its head back in place, still smiling that creepy, disturbing smile. I’m not sure what it was going to do with me. But I knew for a fact that I wasn’t going to like it. Its arms started to drag upwards, looking like it took the creature a bit of effort to move. They slithered up me, up my legs, past my torso, until they were cupped around my face. Then slowly, centimetre by centimetre, the points of the spade like hands started to edge closer to my eyes, and I knew what was going to happen. There was no point screaming. It wouldn’t change anything. It might even make the creature move faster, get it over with before someone could come. I could feel the points pricking into the skin around my eyes. I realised with dread that even though I had run, I was still about to end up like my mother. It was inevitable.

I startled awake to find myself lying on the grass of my backyard, the skies dark. I must have fainted from the sight of my dad and dreamt it all. I stood up slowly, keeping my arms out to keep me steady from the wave of dizziness that washed over me. It took a while for my eyes to adjust, and when they did I saw that my dad’s body was still in the fence, though it did look like that he had slid a little further down the spokes. I looked around me to see if anything was there, if the creature was back to make the nightmare I had just have come true. There was nothing so I relaxed a little bit.

I walked back inside to the house and was glad to see that there was no noose hanging from the ceiling. I quickly walked over to the family computer that was in the corner of the room and turned it on briefly to check the date. It was a new day. Twelve minutes past three in the morning of the new day to be exact.

I ran to my room and marked off another day with an X on my calendar.

‘Now what?’ I said out loud to myself. There wasn’t really anything to do at three in the morning, and I definitely didn’t want to go to sleep in fear of another nightmare happening and I didn’t want to watch TV in fear of the nightmare from just minutes ago happening to me in real life. So instead, I picked what would probably be the stupidest thing to do. I went on a walk, outside, in the dark, where a strange creature was probably hunting me.

It was strangely calm outside, no noises, no disturbances. I didn’t like it. It was too unnatural. Normally my neighbourhood had dogs barking, babies crying and other disturbances like that. Even at three in the morning. The strange silence made it seem like everyone had disappeared. They probably had. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t find peace in the peace.

There were no cars going through the street, so I walked in the middle of the road. Might not have been a good idea. I was in more open space that way, meaning there were more angles for something to sneak up on me from. I folded my arms and kept them clutched close to me as I walked along, my body tense the whole time.

There was no wind blowing past, yet the leaves in the trees still shook and swayed. I wasn’t going to spend any time on how that was possible, there was no point. There was no point to anything anymore. My parents were already gone, everyone else seemed to have disappeared, and I probably didn’t have a lot of time left before the creature came to find me as well. Maybe it would be better if I just ended it all now, got it over with. It would be better to go out on my own terms.

I was shocked at myself. How could I even think of something like that. Suicide? No. Wasn’t an option. I was going to stay in this world, and I was going to get through this. I’d figure out what was happening, I’d put an end to it, and I’d leave it all behind me. I would start a new life. Get good grades in school, make good choices, get a good career, start a family. I realised that while I was having these thoughts I had stopped walking and was just standing there in the middle of the road, staring at the ground. I looked up, half expecting to see something horrifying. But there was nothing.

I kept walking, this time more confidently. I uncrossed my arms from my chest and instead put them in my pockets. There was a new certain swagger to my step if I do say so myself.

The swagger disappeared almost as soon as it had come. Turns out something horrifying had happened while I was lost in thought.

In front of each house, there was a tree. That wasn't unusual, they had always been there. They had each been planted there when the houses had been put up. But what was unusual was the freshly placed nooses tied to the branches, with freshly hung bodies swaying back and forth, their eyes missing just like before. The bodies belonged to my neighbours, but the trees they were hanging from weren't the trees in front of their houses, but the trees in front of somebody else's. But the hanging bodies weren’t even the worse part. It was the skin, carelessly draped across the branches. The skin of the children living in the street. The rest of their bodies were nowhere in sight.

I looked around some more and saw cut up limbs and pieces of pets in the gutters, looking like they had just been thrown in there. It was so far the worst sight I had seen. Just as I thought the horror of the street was over, I heard a bubbling noise coming from behind me. I looked to see one of the drains flooding over with a black, tar-like substance. It was the same black goopy stuff that had been pouring out of my mum and dad’s eyes before. I didn’t wait any longer. I ran back to my house. Everything seemed like a blur as I sprinted past. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the creature standing on the footpath, with that wicked smile on its face. It wasn’t moving, it was standing still, yet it was still always standing in the corner of my eye as I ran, as if it was teleporting or glitching through reality.

It seemed to take forever to get back to my house but I finally did. There was no sign of the creature anywhere. I figured it would be a good idea to start getting some defence ready. I had no idea if whatever I could come up with would hold back the thing, but it would be better than nothing surely. I ran into the kitchen and grabbed all the kitchen knives, bringing them back to my room. My second trip to the kitchen consisted of me gathering up food and anything else I might need. I dumped them all in the middle of my floor in my room. I then grabbed a bucket of cold water, an empty bucket, some soap and some toilet paper. I would be locking myself in my room after all.

After I had everything I needed I ripped the sheets off of my bed and pulled the mattress, placing it up against my window. I moved my desk in front of the mattress to keep it secure. I quickly ran into my parents and grabbed their mattress as well, planning to keep it secure against my door.

With the mattresses covering up all possible entry ways, I settled myself against the corner of my now uncomfortable bed, back against the wall, holding a long and sharp kitchen knife out in front of me, and stayed alert.

I must not have been alert enough. I jolted a bit, and realised I had fallen asleep. The knife I had been holding was lying on the bed, next to my hand that was limp next to it. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and looked around my room, making sure everything was still the same. Naturally of course the first area of the room my eyes went to was the mattress against the window. Needless to say, I didn’t have to look for very long to tell that everything was very much not the same.

There was a hole ripped right through the mattress, which had also come through the window. It looked about the exact size for a head to be able to fit through it. I feared the worst. That creature had been back while I was asleep. I picked the knife back up again, gripping it tight in my hand. Holding it in a position where I could easily strike out at anything, I did a quick sweep of my room, searching for anything that was different. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, so maybe it had only been spying on me while I slept. For some reason that idea scared me more than if it had actually done something. I told myself that I actually had no proof that the thing had come back, but there wasn’t anyone else around that could have cut a hole like that into the mattress. They were all gone. All gone, most likely because of that thing.

I started to feel a sense of anger building up in me. Anger mixed with fear. This thing seemed to be playing games with me. I was no survivor, so how was it I had lasted this long? The only conclusion I could come up with was that that thing was savouring my continuous moments of terror. Or it was just pure luck, although it would have to be a hell of a lot of luck. Of course another possible explanation was that I was just crazy, that all of this was in my head. Honestly, I didn’t know which answer was more frightening.

A sudden crash and the sound of smashing glass snapped me out of my thinking, and I whipped my head towards the kitchen. Every ounce of logic I had told me not to go towards the sound, to stay safe in my room. But I noticed recently logic was not winning me over. I had opened the door for the knocking, even if it was a dream, gone on a walk outside, and now I was considering investigating the noise. I seemed to be drawn to these things happening. I had always been a bit of a coward, so why was I so interested when it really seemed like life or death?

I didn’t really realise until I was halfway down the hallway that I realised what I was doing. I was too busy thinking again that I hadn’t even realised what I was doing. That seemed to be happening a lot recently. Might just be better to stop thinking overall.

I rounded the corner that led into the kitchen, stepping into it very cautiously. I did a similar sweep of the room like I did with my room. I inspected all the glass things, the windows, the glasses, some plates. I briefly thought maybe the noise had actually come from another room, but for some reason I convinced myself it was this room.

But just to be sure, I did a safety check of all the other rooms in the house, doing a similar inspection like I had done in the kitchen. After an hour of checking everything, I found nothing, and decided to retreat back to my room. I glanced at the hole cut into the mattress, and saw that it was still the same, then did another safety check throughout the room to make sure nothing had snuck in while I had been absent.

I sat back down on my bed, back against the wall and my knees drawn up. Honestly, I didn’t know if finding something would have been worse than not finding anything. On the one hand, stumbling across that creature, or another body of someone that had been cruelly murdered, was a terrifying thought. But on the other hand, the thought of that thing actually being in the house somewhere, was even worse. Panic rose up in me, and despite common sense telling me I probably wouldn’t find anything new, I got up off my bed, and did another quick safety inspection of the house.

Every room in the house was the exact same, as expected. But the fact that it was the same, made my parents room the hardest to look at. The part of the noose that was left was still hanging from the roof, seeming like a horrible reminder of what had happened to my mother, and everyone else. I suddenly became aware of a smell in the room, and looked down to see that my vomit from before hadn't been cleaned up, and was beginning to soak into the floor, filling the room with that gross smell.

I had nothing to do, so I figured it might be best to keep myself busy, starting by cleaning up the mess on the floor. I exited my parents old room heading towards where we keep our cleaning supplies. As I passed my room, a brief glance showed me that the hole in the mattress was still the same. When I walked past it again, cleaning supplies in hand heading back to my parents room, I did another check. Still nothing had changed. I decided to check the mattress every time I walked past the room. I didn’t trust. I had a feeling, one of the checks would show me something in it, maybe the creature's head shoved through the hole, watching me without its eyes.

I spent about fifteen minutes trying to scrub my vomit out of the floor, but it must have been there too long and stained. I gave up on even trying. Like I was eventually going to do a lot of things I thought.

I wanted food. It seemed strange that I felt hungry when I was cleaning up the thing that most people would lose their appetite from, but everything was strange right now. I mean, if you thought about it, everything had always been a bit strange, even before all these creepy things started happening. The world is truly a strange world.

Glancing at the mattress as I walk past, I see nothing, and continue down on my way to the kitchen. I make myself a sandwich and sit at the kitchen bench. As I chew on the half stale bread, I figure I should probably move away from the house, go somewhere else to try and hide from the thing. I should go somewhere more secluded, an area that would be hard to get to. I could grab a bunch of supplies I had already had access to in the house. Food, some kitchen knives and anything else I could use to defend myself with. And maybe, if I moved location, the creature wouldn’t be able to find me. I might be able to escape. Maybe I could find a place where people were alive and get help from them. Then maybe, everything could turn out alright in the future.

I just ended up locking myself in the bathroom. The only way I actually stuck to my original plan was just by taking some food and knives in with me. Eating food while sitting on the bathroom floor isn’t exactly ideal, but then again, nothing about my situation was.

Sitting in a bathroom doing absolutely nothing was a little bit boring. I had been in there for a while, most of the time just thinking and contemplating what would happen if I decided to step out. I told myself that the worst that could happen would be that the creature had come back and decided to kill me, which the more I thought about it, the less scared I got. My parents were dead, they weren’t coming back. Everyone else on the street was dead or missing, and I was all alone in the house with some monster from my dreams trying to come after me. I knew I was going to die eventually, so thinking about it wasn’t as frightening anymore. That wasn’t to say I wanted to die, I just wouldn’t try to stop it. With that thought in mind, I decided to just leave the bathroom, and let whatever would happen to me happen.

When I stepped out through the bathroom door, holding one of the kitchen knives, I noticed that the house seemed different. Nothing had moved, but it still felt different from before. I walked down the hallway, turning to enter my room.

Before I had decided that I wasn’t going to be scared of anything now, that I was just going to carry on, but that was before I had seen this sight. The hole that had been cut into the mattress was still there, but this time it wasn’t empty. The creature's head was shoved into it. Honestly, I wasn’t too surprised, a head sized hole that looked like it had been sliced by those weird spade hands, I had always been expecting to see this. But what I hadn’t been expecting to see was that it now had eyes. Parts of its skin looked like it had been peeled back to create two openings, where two human looking eyes were placed, staring at the wall on the opposite side of the room.

I stepped back slightly, taken away by the sight of it, and the floor underneath me creaked. The creature's head didn’t move, but its new eyes snapped towards my direction to stare at me. Acting on impulse, I brung the kitchen knife in my hand up and lazily threw it at the creature. Surprisingly it landed, the knife tip planting itself in the creature's forehead. The creature shook its head, the knife falling out onto the ground, and then seemed to blink, the peeled back skin coming down over the eyes. The motion of the skin moving made the eyes fall out of its head and land on the floor, before the skin moved back into place making the creature look like it had before.

I took a couple steps away from the eyes, and watched as the creature slivered its head out of the mattress hole, and disappeared. I stood there dumbly for a couple seconds, staring at the mattress, before dropping my attention down to the now discarded eyeballs. I felt sick looking at them, and willed myself not to throw up again. I went back into the bathroom, and pulled out basically the entire roll of toilet paper, scrunching it into my hand so I could use it to pick the eyes up and get rid of them. During the process, I was leaning away from them, not like that was doing any help, since they were being held in my hand. I didn’t know what to do with them, or where to put them, so I just threw them out the window onto the grass.

I picked up the knife that was still lying on the floor and returned to the position I was in earlier, sitting on my bed, back up against the wall, knees drawn up and knife held in a defensive position. The courage I had before had left now, and I was back to being a scared mess.

← — →

I apparently wasn’t really good at staying awake during any of this, since I fell asleep again. I woke up to see the sun just beginning to come up through my still open window, and the early light shining into my room. I glanced at my alarm clock and saw that it was 6:37am.

I was still really tired, so I got up, walked to my calendar, marked off another X for another day, and then collapsed back onto my bed, planning to deal with whatever scares were going to happen the next day.

So far I have managed to survive four days. I had no idea how much longer I had left. Those were my last thoughts before I drifted into sleep again.

I woke up about two hours later. I was still a little tired, but there was no point going back to sleep. For about five minutes, I did nothing. I just sat in bed, occasionally glancing around my room, although I didn’t know what I was expecting to see. I was bored. It felt weird to be bored when you were hiding from something trying to kill you, but I was.

I pulled back my covers off of me and jumped out of bed, heading down to the kitchen. I couldn’t enter any room anymore without doing at least a brief check over anything, to make sure nothing had changed, or the creature wasn’t hiding somewhere, but my kitchen check showed me that nothing was different. Or at least nothing that I could tell.

I made myself a bowl of cereal. Looking at the pantry and the fridge, I could see that there wasn’t much food left. There was enough for the time being, but eventually I would run out, and have to find some more. But then again, I might not last long enough for the food to run out.

I started walking around the house, my breakfast in my hand, eating as I moved. The only thing there was to really do was to just do continuous safety checks of each room, but all of them proved to be useless. Nothing had changed, I couldn’t find any trace of that monster anywhere.

I turned down the hallway, planning to do the fourth checks I had already done on mine and my parents room. Walking down the hallway, I stopped for a brief second to look at the family portraits we had hanging up on the wall. There was one of my parents on their wedding day, one of me on my first day of school, a photo of the entire extended family, with all my cousins and aunties and uncles, and one of just the three of us, me, my mum, and my dad. It had been a long time since I had even acknowledged the pictures on the wall. In all the photos we all looked so happy. I was never going to get any of this back. No photos like these would ever be taken again, and I would most likely never be as happy as I was in them ever again.

Tears started to well up, and I let them fall. This was the most I had cried since it had started. There was no one around to hear my ugly sobs so I cried like an annoying child would out in public. I had been so caught up in trying to survive and hide, that I had partly forgotten about everything that I had lost and would never get back, I had definitely forgotten all about my other family. I wonder what happened to them. Were they safe since they were in a different country? Or had everyone in the world just been killed, the creature leaving me for last?

I took one of the pictures off the wall, the one of just me and my parents, and held it to my chest as I slid down the wall, hugging my knees tight to me. I held the photo out so I could look at it, and so I could remember what my parents looked like, and try to remember all the fun times we had before everything happened. This photo was taken during probably one of the funnest times in our lives. We had gone on a family trip to England, travelling around the country for two whole months. It was so much fun. The photo was taken with us all standing in front of the stonehenge, a place I had always wanted to visit. Tears continued to pour out as I looked at the photo.

I was going to move to hug it again, when something caught my attention. Through the blur of my tears, I could see something in the background of the photo. It looked long and pale, slightly behind one of the stones. I rubbed my eyes so I could see clearly, and saw that bloody creature, pale and tall, it’s creepy smile on its blank face, half standing behind the stone. I screamed, the most blood curdling scream I had ever made and tossed the photo away from me.

I stood up and looked at the other photos. It was in every one of them. The photo of me on the first day of school had been taken in front of the house, in front of a window. I could see the creature standing through it, smiling. I threw the photo away. The family photo was taken in a nice picnic area, in a clearing surrounded by trees. In the background the creature was standing amongst those trees, smiling. I threw the photo away. The photo of my parents wedding day had been taken in front of a lighthouse, in the sunset. The whole lighthouse was in shot of the photo, and the creature was standing at the top in the lantern room, smiling. I threw the photo away with the rest of them.

“Putting yourself in the backgrounds of photos,” I shouted out, “Pretty pathetic horror cliche!”

But an effective one, I thought. It was useless shouting out to the creature, when it might not even be able to hear me, but I was trying to make my point. What my point was, I honestly had no idea.

Hesitantly, I walked towards the photos scattered across the floor. Turning one over and taking a brief glance, I saw that the thing was still in it. I dropped the photo instinctively, and jolted back a bit. Then I regained my courage and picked up all the photos, taking care not to look at any of them.

I went into the lounge and walked towards the fireplace. Setting the photos aside for the time being, I grabbed some extra firewood and paper and lit them. In a couple minutes there was a good fire going, and I threw the photos into it. I stood back from the fire and stared at the photos burning, watching as the flames engulfed it and began to crinkle the paper. Some of those photos had been up in the hallway for as long as I had remembered. But I didn’t feel guilty for burning them. I had a feeling I would have felt guilty if I hadn’t.

Throughout the rest of the day, weird things kept happening. The creature didn’t make another appearance. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. I wasn’t sure of anything anymore. For all I knew though, the creature could have been there, causing things to happen around the house. Sometimes I would walk into a room and see a window I was sure was closed, was now open, and I would walk into another room and see a window I knew was open, be closed. Sometimes music from my speaker in my room would start randomly playing and then turn off again after about five seconds. It seemed like the creature wanted to listen to music, but then decided it didn’t like Led Zeppelin.

Everytime something like this would happen, I would immediately run to the room where I could hear it coming from. Every time I saw nothing. My decision to run straight into the rooms was entirely impulsive. I didn’t even bring my trusty knife with me most of the time. I had given up carrying it around and had just left it on the kitchen bench.

Around midday the windows and the music just seemed to become a part of the background. I barely noticed it anymore, and I gave up investigating. It wasn’t like I was going to find or achieve anything by doing it. I was wasting energy, I realised. I should preserve my strength for when or if I would need it. Aimlessly running around the house to try and find something that was never there was wasting a lot of strength and energy.

After that minor epiphany, the rest of the day seemed to go by in a blur. A slow blur. By the time it was dark outside, I wasn’t scared to sleep. Even if the creature was there, I doubted it would do anything to me in my sleep, it seemed to enjoy making me suffer. I had already had the thought it was taunting me by doing all these creepy things, but not actually killing me. Yet.

I walked over to my calendar and marked off yet another X, then I walked over to my bed and collapsed onto it, falling asleep in a couple minutes. Five days had gone.

One week later:

An entire week had gone by and nothing had happened. The creature didn’t make itself seen again, no windows would mysteriously open and shut, no music playing all of a sudden, no creepy images or messed up photos. Nothing. By now I had twelve X’s marked down on my calendar, and I was on my thirteenth day of survival.

It was on this very day that I realised I was running very low on food. I had been running out before, but that was a whole week ago. Now I needed to get more food supplies. So I guessed I had made it long enough.

I made the decision to go out and walk to the local supermarket. I would take a knife with me. I knew, realistically, it probably wouldn’t do anything against the creature, but carrying it gave me a sense of safety and protection.

As I was mentally preparing myself to shove into the outside world, I convinced myself that this could be a good thing. Not only would I get more food, but maybe I could possibly find some people who were actually alive. Ever since this had all started, I hadn’t actually gone past my street. I had no way of knowing if anyone outside of that was alive or not.

When I stepped outside, I noticed everything was very dark, like it came straight out of some sort of horror movie. It was cold. I walked down the street, cautiously glancing over my shoulder and looking left and right every now and again. I rubbed my arms to keep me warm, but it didn’t do much. I wished I’d bought a jacket.

I was about halfway down my street when I first noticed them. They hadn’t been around my house, but bodies were hanging from the trees, just like they had been in the nightmare I had.

I felt my heart rate go faster. The atmosphere seemed similar to the one in my dream. I felt my chest constricting and felt like I was going to have a panic attack, or pass out. But I kept on walking, and tried to ignore the eyeless bodies. There was also a lot of blood pouring into the drains on the side of the road, and some sort of meat in the gutter, but I paid no attention to that, just kept on walking.

When I made it to the streets with the shops on it, the darkness hadn’t cleared away, and there was still no one in sight. The bodies weren’t hanging anymore, instead they were scattered around on the ground, or hanging on fences, and there were more of them. It looked like some sort of massacre had happened here. The smell was horrible, and I brought up my hand to cover my nose and block out the stench.

The supermarket glass sliding doors had been smashed, and one was leaning on an angle. Most of the lights inside were off, apart from the occasional flickering ones. The creepy atmosphere was even worse inside, and I wanted to run back out, and keep running all the way home, but I pushed on and forced myself to step over the glass shattered on the ground.

Despite the darkness, I knew where everything was, and I easily made my ways to the different aisles, grabbing the food I thought I would need. I grabbed about two loaves of bread, a bottle of milk, some butter and spreads, a bag of fruit, a box of muesli bars, and some junk food snacks, because if I was going to die, why not spend my last days feasting like a king?

I was walking out of the chip aisle and all of a sudden I felt my foot fly up and I fell to the ground, dropping most of my food. I groaned as I stood up slowly and felt something wet and sticky on my hands. Blood. I slipped in blood. I quickly hurried away from it and hit something behind me. I turned around and saw a dismembered and bloody body of a store clerk. Black goop was leaking from where their eyes had been. I screamed, and grabbed up the food I could, before running out of the store, almost tripping up again and landing in glass. Ignoring the corpses on the street and in the trees, I ran all the way home, tears running down my face the whole time.

By the time I got home, I was panting and sweating a little from the run. Man was I grateful to be home. When I opened the door I was greeted with a big open room. I stood in the doorway, stunned. Everything was missing. The furniture, the pictures on the wall, the bits and pieces crammed into storage containers in the corner of the room, all gone. I stepped into the room slowly, turning around in circles, looking high and low to see if anything was left. There was nothing. I could see into the kitchen from where I was standing and it looked to be just as empty. Just to be sure, I checked all the kitchen cabinets, drawers and the fridge but there was nothing.

I moved my search into the hallways and into the other rooms, each were equally empty. There was nothing left in the house. It was like it was brand new, or being put up on sale, ready for someone new to move in. With everything missing, it felt as if all the physical evidence of all the memories I had with my parents in the house were gone.

Suddenly exhausted, I walked out of the hallway back into the lounge, running my fingers through my hair. Along with being exhausted, I was also suddenly thirsty, but there was nothing to drink from anymore. I decided at this point it wouldn’t be so bad to drink straight from the tap, that is if the water hadn’t been taken either.

I walked to the kitchen and turned on the tap, grateful that seemingly clean water still ran from it. I put my head half in the sink and put my mouth up to the water, feeling a little physically better as the water ran down my throat. When I finished, I turned the tap back off and wiped the back of my mouth with my sleeve while turning around, ready to walk back to the lounge.

For what seemed to be the millionth time since everything had happened, I stopped stunned as I saw a piece of paper sitting on the kitchen counter. I had checked the kitchen before, there had been nothing there. There had been nothing anywhere. Where the hell could it have come from? Taking a couple more steps forward I noticed it had words written in messy handwriting on it, and a pen sitting next to it.

What is your name?

The question written on the paper seemed an odd one to me. I looked around the room, trying to see if there was any trace of someone that could have left the note there. But then again it could have been the creature. I looked out the windows, only half expecting to see something standing there. There was nothing. I looked back down at the paper and slowly picked up the pen, and considered for a while whether I should actually write something, and if I did, should I write my actual name.

A couple more seconds of thinking and I decided there didn’t seem to be too much harm in writing my name, so I wrote the full thing under the question and put the pen down again. I stood in the kitchen in silence for a minute, waiting to see if anything would happen. When it didn’t, I shrugged to myself and decided to do some useless rounds around the house.

I spent fifteen minutes just strolling around the house, checking to see if anything was hiding anywhere or if anything had changed. But it hadn’t, so I walked back to the kitchen to see if at least the paper had changed.

I was both happy and disturbed to see that it had. Next to my name there was a tick, as if it was saying I was correct with my answers, the way teachers do. Underneath my name, a new question had been written in the same messy handwriting:

How old are you?

I picked up the pen that was still next to the paper and wrote my answer. Nothing happened for the few minutes I stood in the kitchen, so I left to walk around outside for a few more minutes. When I went back into the kitchen, another tick had been drawn next my age, and another question had been written underneath.

What do you like?

I picked up the pen again and wrote, AC/DC, frogs, motorbikes, food, sleep. I was beginning to figure out the pattern on how this all worked, and left the room again for a couple more minutes. When I went back in, just as I had suspected, a tick was next to my answer, and a new question was written.

What do you dislike?

Just like the others, I answered.

The question went on for another three days. New questions would appear, and I would answer them, then a tick would be put next to that answer and a new question would appear. I was about 80% sure it was that creature asking the questions, and I was curious as to why.

The questions were somewhat normal, just kind of asking about my life, but at one point it completely switched up and it asked me, How many fingers do you have? It was a random question, but I just kind of ignored it. The question directly after that was, What colour are your eyes? After that question, they went back to asking me about my life, how many friends I have, what my parents' names were, things like that.

I was on my sixteenth day of surviving, and fifteen X’s would have been marked on my calendar if I had it with me, but I didn’t so I had to mark them down mentally.The questions had become a routine at this point and that routine was, go into the kitchen to answer the question written there, and then I would go into my room or somewhere else and wait for about ten to fifteen minutes, before going back into the kitchen to answer the next question.

I was heading there now, wondering to myself about what would be written there. As I predicted, my previous answer had a tick next to it, and something new had been written. This question was probably the most unusual of all in my opinion, weirder than the finger one. On the surface, the question wasn’t weird at all, but to me it seemed like there was something more to it, and it unsettled me.

Who are you?

I picked up the pen again and wrote my full name, just like I had done the first time, and went back into my room to keep myself busy while I waited, even though there was nothing to do anymore. The first couple times when I had waited for the next question, I had sat in my room in silence, trying to see if I could hear the creature walking into the kitchen and writing on the paper. After a while of not being able to hear anything, I had given up, but now I was back at it. I leaned against my closed bedroom door and put my ear to it. The only thing I could hear was my own breath.

Quietly I opened the door and stepped out into the empty hallway, inching to the end of it to try and see if I could hear better from here, or possibly even catch something.

I must’ve waited in the spot for about twenty minutes before I became bored and tired of standing in one position. It was about time to go and check the paper so I made my way back into the kitchen.

When I looked at the paper, I saw an X had been written next to my most recent answer, as if it was telling me I was wrong, and no new question had been added. A little panicked, I looked around the empty room, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever put that there on the paper. I saw nothing. I was afraid to touch the paper. I felt as if I had done something wrong and I felt as if I touched the paper, I would do more wrong. I stepped away from the paper and pen and just left it sitting there.

Glancing out the window, I saw that it was dark outside. That seemed weird to me. I could swear it was bright out not even too long ago. This day seemed to have gone really fast even though all I did the entire day was just answer some questions. Time seemed like such an illusion to me now. Maybe time really was an illusion.

I walked up to my room, and kept feeling like something was walking behind me, causing me to constantly glance back. Each time there was nothing but the uneasy feeling didn’t go away. I closed the door behind me when I got to my room and lied down in the corner, where I had been sleeping without my bed for the past couple nights. In my mind I marked down another day, bringing the number to sixteen gone by.

It was cold at night without my blanket and I shivered, bringing my knees up and hugging them close to my body, curling myself up into a ball.

← — →

I woke up early the next morning, just as the light of the sun began to peak through the curtains. I had stayed in the same position the whole night, curled up in a ball on the floor. The morning air was just as cold as the late night air. I shivered, rubbing my arms to keep them warm.

I exited my room and made my way to the kitchen to see if anything had happened with the paper while I had been asleep. When I got there the paper was gone, and so was the pen. I looked around the kitchen, trying to find it, but I couldn’t see it anywhere.

I shrugged, telling myself that there was nothing to worry about, but I didn’t completely believe myself. There was a doubt at the back of my mind that something bad was going to happen.

I decided to do a round of the house to keep myself busy. I made my way around the empty rooms finding nothing but blank space. I made my way to the end of the round. I opened up the front door to step out and saw the paper with the questions sitting on the front porch, soaked from the morning dew and ripped to pieces.

The doubt that had been in the back of my mind grew stronger and turned into fear. I ran back into the house and locked the door behind me. I ran up to the bathroom and locked myself in there again. I had spent a lot of my time hiding there.

I didn’t know what the ripped paper meant, if it meant anything at all, but it gave me a bad feeling. I felt like I had really messed up with my answer.

Mentally, I had marked down 17 days gone past. The night I spent in the bathroom was a cold and uncomfortable one, but I was too scared to go outside. Seeing that paper all torn up in lots of little pieces had been terrifying, and I still couldn’t say why. Maybe because it was a sign I mucked up, that I somehow angered the creature with my answer. But no matter what the deal was, it didn’t feel good.

I spent the entire night and most of the day in the bathroom. It wasn’t until I could see it starting to get a little darker outside the bathroom window that I decided to leave my hideout. It looked to be about evening, meaning I spent basically a full twenty four hours inside of that bathroom.

I heard my stomach rumble and remembered how hungry I was. Ever since everything in the house had disappeared, I had nothing to eat. Not eating was making me feel sick, and I had a massive headache. I tried to help it by drinking some of the tap water, but that just made the sick feeling worse. I tried to ignore it as much as I could as I started to do another round of the house.

The only good thing about everything being gone was that now I didn’t have to pay attention to every little thing to see if it had moved. Double checking everything was a nightmare, and my brain would keep saying that something had changed, even though it hadn’t. It was torture. But now I don't have that. All I had to do was glance in the room and just do a quick scan, and look in the cupboards and wardrobes.

I began to make my way outside, I admit a little hesitantly. When I opened the front door, I was relieved to find the paper had been moved, and was no longer glaring right in my face. I stepped further outside the house and walked around the yard, trying to look closely at the grass to see if I could find any footprints from the creature, but I wasn’t a master at tracking, I wasn’t even a beginner, and I guessed I just looked like a lunatic staring closely at the ground.

My search outside showed me no signs of anything that had changed, or at least no changes of anything I could notice. I walked back into the house, and when I opened the front door, I was startled to find all the furniture back where it had been before, almost as if it hadn’t moved at all.

This freaked me out more than when it disappeared. Everything had gone missing when I had been out for a while. I didn’t know what this strange horrific creature was capable of, but based on what I had seen I didn’t put it past it to be able to move furniture out of my house quickly. But I had just been outside, and only for about five minutes, and somehow everything had been put back into place without me even noticing.

My heart started to beat faster and my breathing intensified as I started to panic. I forced myself to stay calm, and tried to take some deep breaths to help. I told myself to forget about how it happened, and focus on the fact that the food should be back. I half speed walked, half ran into the kitchen, still feeling like there was something behind me. When I opened the pantry and fridge I was greeted with the sight of fresh food. I made myself a ham and cheese sandwich. The first few bites made my stomach ache worse, but after it settled, I continued to happily gulp down my meal.

I continued to eat as I walked around the rest of the house, making sure everything was back where it should be. It was, which I was relieved about, even though I was still a little unnerved by it all.

I turned into my parents room, hoping all their things were back and almost ran outside again with the sight I saw. It was like everything had gone back to how it was before, but maybe a bit too much. My parents room held the exact same sight it had the first night when everything had started. Hanging from a noose at the foot of my parents bed, was my mum, looking just as pale as she had that night, and the same black goo dripping from where her eyes should have been. Looking down, I was surprised that even my vomit from that night was back. It was as if that creature had recreated everything. Or I had gone back in time.

I suddenly had a thought, bolted down the hallway back outside into the yard again, and saw my father’s back on the fence spokes, just like he had been 17 days ago. I had honestly been expecting to see him there, but that didn’t make the sight any better.

The same sick feeling I had the first time I saw my mother’s dead body came back, and the same panic I had been feeling for the past 17 days was back, but stronger.

I ran back inside the house, grateful that everything had been returned to its proper place, as I grabbed my trusty kitchen knife, some food, my calendar and a couple large bottles of water, which I packed inside my school bag. I was going to spend the rest of my time alive camping out, but not anywhere near this hell house.

I ran back out the door, trying my best to avoid the gruesome sight of my father. I sprinted down the street at a dead run, running down random streets, not exactly knowing where I was going. The feeling of something watching and following me was stronger than it had ever been before, but everytime I slowed down a bit to take stock of my surroundings, there was nothing there.

After another twenty minutes of running, I was on the far side of town, far away from my house. I slowed down my pace here and turned down a long street with lots of houses down it. I turned into the driveway of the third house and hopped their fence. A quick glance around their backyard showed me a garden shed, which I immediately ran to and shut myself in.

I decided this would be my new hideout.

I looked at my calendar. Twenty X’s for twenty days. I had no idea when, or if, my old life - the life where I was happy - was ever coming back. My guess was that it wasn't. People don’t just rise from the dead. But to be fair, after everything that had happened, I wouldn’t be that surprised.

I was exhausted. I hadn’t slept at all since arriving at the shed, not trusting what might happen. I was scared that I might be reaching my limits by keeping my eyes open. Realistically, I realised I wouldn’t be able to stay awake for much longer. Even while thinking these thoughts I could feel my eyelids starting to fall.

I decided I might as well give in to sleep. I would probably die from exhaustion if I didn’t. It was a funny thought. Dying from exhaustion after everything that had happened.

The dark shed began to grow darker as my eyes slowly closed. I was pretty much already asleep before they even finished closing, but through very slight consciousness, and thinly slitted eyes, I could swear I could see two long pale legs suddenly appearing in front of me.

With no more energy left in my body to even open my eyes back up, I let sleep consume me.

← — →

I woke up and noticed two things. The first is that there is a horrible pain around my eyes. The second thing is that I can’t open them, and I’m kept in pitch darkness. I bring my hands up to my face, and feel horror wash over my body. How I didn’t notice this before I don’t know, but feeling my face with my fingers tells me that my eyes aren’t even there now. It feels as if my eyelids have been sewn over, and I can feel the string threading them together.

I feel sick to my stomach, but I force myself to calm down, because I need to make sure that creature hasn’t done anything else. It probably has. I get to my knees and hold my arms out in front of me, feeling my way around the shed. I find the wall and move myself around the other three walls, before deciding to just aimlessly swing my arms around, hoping to capture something that could give me a sign that my things hadn’t been taken again. But I couldn’t feel anything. I was fairly certain the creature had taken all my food. And my calendar.

Then I felt something. I couldn’t tell what it was, but it felt to be in a rectangle shape, it was also hard and cold. I could feel there were bumps on the top side of it and I traced my fingers along them. Feeling the bumps and I quickly figured out that they were spelling out letters. I traced around each letter, silently mouthing them to myself.

F R I E N D

I could feel the bump of a tick next to the last letter. I didn’t know what it meant, but then I remembered the sheet of paper with the questions, and my wrong answer. Was this the answer I was supposed to give? The thought unsettled me.

I hadn’t even tried to open the shed door up. I’m pretty sure I forgot to try. Standing up I walked forwards until I reached one of the walls, and felt my way around until I felt the crack that indicated the sliding door. I tried to pull it open, but it wouldn’t budge. I tried harder, and it still wouldn’t move an inch. I was trapped.

This must be what the creature was planning. Trapping me in the shed, taking away my food, and my sight. It was planning to starve me, while all I could see was black.

This was by far the most terrifying thing the creature had done.

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